1. Technical Field
The technical field of the present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system and in particular to a method and apparatus for processing data. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for sending email messages.
2. Description of Related Art
One popular use of the internet is for the exchange of electronic mail, also referred to as email messages. An email system typically involves a server-based mail program residing on a server computer to manage the exchange of email messages over one or more networks and a client-based mail program residing on the client to implement a mail box that receives and holds the email messages for a user. Typically, these client-based programs also include a graphical user interface to enable a user to easily and conveniently open and read email messages in addition to creating new email messages.
Users often send email messages to multiple recipients. In some cases, after sending an email message to a number of recipients on a list, the user may realize that this particular email message also should have been sent to other recipients who were not on the original list of recipients. One solution is to forward the original email message to the additional recipients. A problem, however, occurs with this forwarding of the email message. If the additional recipients receiving the forwarded email message reply to all of the addresses in the message, the original recipients would never see the reply. Another solution is to create a new email message with the same content and all of the recipients and then send this email message to all of the recipients. In this case, the prior recipients would have two copies of the same email message. As a result, those recipients, having two copies, may reply to the copy without the additional or new recipients. In that case, those additional recipients would not see these replies.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method, apparatus, and computer instructions for resending an email message to additional recipients.